The Paris Review – Diego, Frida & Me

I’ve done several murals. Mural work is art at its most blue collar and most sublime: half carpentry and half metaphysics. You’re exhausted and filthy, wobbling on a rickety platform, but you’re creating a world. Anyone who enters a room you’ve painted does it on your terms. When I do murals, I feel as if I’m John Henry, racing the steam engine through a mountain. If I will die, it will be with a paintbrush in my hand.

Last year I started doing giant paintings about the revolutions of 2011. I was inspired by Diego Rivera.

About Molly:
Molly Crabapple is an artist, journalist, and author of the memoir, Drawing Blood. Called "An emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery" by the New Republic, she has drawn in and reported from Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi's migrant labor camps, and in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Crabapple is a contributing editor for VICE, and has written for publications including The New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.